own father, if he demanded six millions of sesterces of you; for that he had been bail for you to that amount.  And he himself, burning with love, declared positively that because he was unable to bear the misery of being separated from you, he should go into banishment.  And at that time what misery of that most nourishing family did I allay, or rather did I remove!  I persuaded the father to pay the son’s debts; to release the young man, endowed as he was with great promise of courage and ability, by the sacrifice of part of his family estate; and to use his privileges and authority as a father to prohibit him not only from all intimacy with, but from every opportunity of meeting you.  When you recollected that all this was done by me, would you have dared to provoke me by abuse if you had not been trusting to those swords which we behold?]

[Footnote 15:  Sisapo was a town in Spain, celebrated for some mines of vermilion, which were farmed by a company.]

[Footnote 16:  She was a courtesan who had been enfranchised by her master Volumnius.  The name of Volumnia was dear to the Romans as that of the wife of Coriolanus, to whose entreaties he had yielded when he drew off his army from the neighbourhood of Rome.]

[Footnote 17:  This is a play on the name Hippia, as derived from [Greek:  hippos], a horse.]

[Footnote 18:  The custom of erecting a spear wherever an auction was held is well known, it is said to have arisen from the ancient practice of selling under a spear the booty acquired in war.]

[Footnote 19:  There seems some corruption here.  Orellius apparently thinks the case hopeless.]

[Footnote 20:  The Latin is, “non solum de die, sed etiam in diem, vivere;” which the commentators explain, “De die is to feast every day and all day.  Banquets de die are those which begin before the regular hour.” (Like Horace’s Partem solido demere de die.) “To live in diem is to live so as to have no thought for the future.”—­Graevius.]

[Footnote 21:  This accidental resemblance to the incident in the “Forty Thieves” in the “Arabian Nights” is curious.]

[Footnote 22:  The septemviri, at full length septemviri epulones or epulonum, were originally triumviri.  They were first created BC. 198, to attend to the epulum Jovis, and the banquets given in honour of the other gods, which duty had originally belonged to the pontifices.  Julius Caesar added three more, but that alteration did not last.  They formed a collegium, and were one of the four great religious corporations at Rome with the pontifices, the augures, and the quindecemviri.  Smith, Diet, Ant. v. Epulones.]

[Footnote 23:  It had been explained before that Fulvia had been the widow of Clodius and of Curio, before she married Antonius.]

[Footnote 24:  Riddle (Dict.  Lat. in voce) says, that this was the regular punishment for deserters, and was inflicted by their comrades.]